“That would be cool,” I say.
And then something incredible happens. Hervé puts his finger on my chin and tips my face up. Then he ducks down and kisses me. Softly, gently. When his lips brush against mine, my whole body feels warm and bright. It’s as if my skin is sparkling. This is what it’s like to swallow a star.
Mom, Raoul, and about a million other people are watching, but I hardly notice them. When Hervé steps back, I’m breathless.
“Au revoir,” he says softly. “That means, ‘until the next time.’ ”
“Au revoir,” I reply.
We stand there together until after the call for small children and passengers needing assistance, until almost everyone else has boarded the plane, and then I make my way to the gate, my eyes on him until I have to turn to go down the skywalk. And then I’m on the plane, on my way back to the U.S.
For the first hour or so, I’m too distracted to read or sketch or do much of anything. I replay that kiss over and over, and then I revisit every moment I spent with Hervé, starting with that first cup of hot chocolate.
Finally, the flight attendant comes down the aisle, pushing her meal cart. “Beef or chicken?” she asks. She has a French accent.
“Chicken,” Mom says absentmindedly.
I glance over at her sketchpad. She’s been drawing a girl, or maybe it’s a woman. She’s standing in a cave, hands reaching out, eyes gazing toward heaven. I suddenly realize that she’s sketching Bernadette Soubirous. Hmm. Could she be entering a new phase?
When the flight attendant looks at me, I look up at her and smile. “Le boeuf, s’il vous plait.”
The flight from Paris to Detroit is nine hours, after which we change planes and hop a commuter to Grand Rapids. From there it’s a forty-five minute drive to our home near Lake Michigan. By the time we arrive on our doorstep, night has fallen. It’s too late to drop by Whitney’s house, but as soon as our suitcases are brought inside, I go to my computer and log in to send her a message: “When can we meet?”
She must be online, because she replies right away. “Tomorrow. How about 11AM? How was Paris???”
“Later,” I reply. I’ve got so much to tell her, but I want to do it in person. This is life-changing stuff. If we’re laughing and crying together, we should be in the same room, close enough to hug. I brush my teeth and put on my pajamas. Mom and Raoul are still in the living room, decompressing from our trip. They’re sitting on the sofa with glasses of wine. Somehow I don’t think Raoul will be going back to his apartment tonight.
“Good night,” I say. I go over and give each of them a kiss.
“Sleep well.” Mom runs her palm over my head.
“Good night, Aiko. Sweet dreams,” Raoul says.
I’m exhausted, but I can’t get to sleep. A million things are going through my head. What will Whitney have to say about Hervé? Will Hervé send an e-mail soon? Should I write to my brother? And what should I call Raoul after the wedding? Dad? Papa? Raoul? My body is on Paris time. It’s telling me that I should be waking up for hot chocolate and croissants right about now, not tunneling under a duvet. I toss and turn for another hour or so before I finally fall asleep.
I wake up way too early—jet lag again. The rest of the house is quiet. Mom is still asleep. I check my e-mail. Nothing yet. I get out my sketchbook and spend an hour or so working on Gadget Girl Falls in Love.
When I hear clattering in the kitchen, I venture out of my room to find Raoul at the stove. The aroma of freshly brewed coffee fills the air.
“How does a Spanish omelet sound?” he asks.
“Sounds great.” I don’t think I’ve ever had one before, but I’m sure it’ll be delicious.
I read the newspaper while he grates and beats and fries.
By the time Mom gets up, breakfast is laid out on the table. As it turns out, a Spanish omelet is made with onions and potatoes, sliced thin and fried till they’re sort of chewy in the middle. It’s the best omelet I’ve ever tasted.
After breakfast I help to load the dishwasher and then get ready to go to Whitney’s house. Mom drops me off about an hour later.
Whitney’s mother answers the door. It’s a weekday and, unlike the rest of us, she has to work. (Mom and Raoul’s classes don’t start up for another two weeks.) She’s decked out in a summer-weight suit, her face all made up. No sweatpants today.
I find Whitney in bed with a black-and-white movie playing. She’s wearing a faded University of Michigan T-shirt and a pair of leggings, and there’s a pile of celebrity gossip magazines on her nightstand.
“Aiko!” She opens her arms to me, and I flop down beside her. “So how was Paris? Tell me!”
“First tell me about you. How was camping?”
“Pfft. You don’t want to know. I got into some poison oak or something and got this hideous rash.” She pulls up her leggings and shows me her calf, all mottled red.
“Oh, well, maybe I can help you out,” I said. “I got you some water from the spring at Lourdes.”
She raises her eyebrows. “You went to Lourdes?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I was in such a rush to get over here that I forgot to dig the bottle out of my suitcase. I’ll bring it next time, okay? I did remember to grab this, though.” I reach into my bag and take out a scarf and a pair of earrings that I bought for Whitney at an open air market in Paris. “Here.”
Whitney unfurls the scarf, which is dyed in the bright colors of a Matisse painting, and holds it in front of her eyes. “I love it. Thank you.”
I try to get her to share more about her vacation, so she tells me about the raccoons that raided their campsite, and the two days of rain that soaked through their tent and finally drove them to a motel down the road.
“Have you heard from Luke?”
“Yeah.” She blushes. “As a matter of fact, we’re going to go see a movie together this Friday.” She looks at me nervously. Until now, she and I have always gone to see movies together. There was never any boy in the way, no one to compete for my attention. And vice versa.
“I met this really cute guy in Paris,” I tell her.
I can see that she’s immediately relieved. “Tell me, tell me!” She bounces on the bed.
“His name is Hervé.” I tell her about everything—his giraffe eyes and curling sideburns, riding on the back of his scooter, our night at Le Moulin Rouge, how I fell and the way that he caught me. Of course I tell her about the gallery opening, and the French celebrities surrounding Aiko, En Pointe, and Celeste, and the kiss at the airport. And then I tell her about my brother, and the fact that my father knows about me, and how he didn’t want me because of my disability. I start crying and Whitney reaches out her hand for mine.
I sob as I’ve never sobbed before. I throw myself down next to Whitney, and even though I know I’m getting snot and tears on her comforter, she doesn’t say a word. She just holds my hand and strokes my hair until I’m all cried out. And then she hands me a box of tissues.
“I bet if he met you now, he’d think you were awesome,” she says.
Now that I have his address, I guess I can decide if I’ll meet him again or not. But it’s not something I want to think about right now.
“My dad didn’t want me either,” Whitney says quietly. “He didn’t fight Mom for custody. He didn’t even ask if he could take Nathan and me with him. He just left, and now he has a new family.”
Well, we’ll still have that in common, even if she starts going to movies and dances with someone else and sits at a different lunch table.
And then it’s as if she’s reading my mind. “You know, nothing is going to change.”
“Yeah,” I say, but things are changing already. There’s Luke, for one thing. And we’ll be starting high school in a couple of weeks—new kids, new classes, new teachers. There’s no way that things can stay the same, but I know that we will always be friends. For now and the foreseeable future, Whitney is the one I’ll tell my secrets to.
“Oh,
I almost forgot to tell you,” I say. “I’ve decided to put my name on the next issue of Gadget Girl.”
Whitney nods, as if I’ve made a wise choice. “People should know how amazingly talented you are,” she says.
And then I tell her about the upcoming wedding and my soon-to-be-stepdad, which, of course, makes her squeal.
“So what happened at Lourdes?” she asks, when I think I’ve finally run out of things to say.
“Oh, yeah. Lourdes.” I tell her about the pilgrims and the grotto and the woman who said “forgive.” And how I realized right then that I didn’t even want to be different from who I am.
Whitney is quiet for a long moment. Then she says, “Maybe that woman wasn’t talking about you and your mom. Maybe she meant that you should forgive your father.”
34
That afternoon, Raoul goes to his apartment and brings back my indigo plant.
“I’m sorry,” he says, although he’s already apologized and I’ve already forgiven him.
He hands over the little pot. The seedling that I had imagined would be lush and leafy right about now is a shriveled sprout. Any other person would give up at this point and start over, but I still have hope. I put it back in its usual place, at the edge of my desk in a circle of lamplight, knowing that it’s going to take more than just a few beams to cure this baby. And then I have an idea.
The bottle of holy water that I bought for Whitney is still sitting on my dresser. I grab it and study the label for a few minutes. This is the water that cured the Emperor’s baby and the bullet-riddled solider. At any rate, this water isn’t going to hurt my plant.
I screw off the top and tip the bottle over the withering seedling just enough so that a few drops wet the soil. I sprinkle another couple of drops on the tiny, curled-up leaves, and screw the top back on.
Japanese is way more complicated than French or Spanish. For starters, there are three different writing systems—hiragana, which is a phonetic alphabet consisting of 47 letters; katakana, which is a simplified version of hiragana and is used for words borrowed from foreign languages, like “cheeseburger”; and kanji, those ideograms from China that look like trees and picnic tables. And then there are different vocabularies depending on whether you’re male or female, younger or older, royal or not. So far, using workbooks and a few key websites, I’ve mastered hiragana, katakana, and a few kanji, which enabled me to write the following letter last night:
“To Junpei,
Today is sunny. [Note: In Japan, you’re supposed to start out talking about the weather.]
I am Aiko. I am your sister. I am fifteen years old. You are my brother. I am happy. I like manga. Do you like manga?
From Aiko.
It’s a poor excuse for a letter, I know, but it’s the best I can do in my self-taught baby Japanese.
Art can be understood in any language. A picture is worth a thousand words and all that. I tuck a couple of issues of Gadget Girl into a manila envelope. I also include last year’s school portrait and a leaf plucked from my indigo plant. I figure he’s spent some time in the fields, so he should be able to identify it. And then I dig a bunch of stamps out of Mom’s desk drawer and mail it to my half brother in Japan.
On the first day of school, I wake to find that my indigo plant has definitely perked up. It has grown—count them—two inches, and greened up nicely. A miracle, I would say, and an excellent beginning to ninth grade.
In celebration, I decide to wear my Frida skirt—the white one with the folkloric appliquéd flowers. Mom is allowing me to wear mascara. She even helps me put it on. Raoul makes a special breakfast—blueberry pancakes with maple syrup—and offers to drive me to school in his convertible. I bundle up hot-off-the-press copies of Gadget Girl Falls in Love, and put them in my backpack. I’m thinking this issue is my best work yet.
Whitney meets me at the school entrance. She’s wearing a T-shirt and a crinkly gauze skirt.
We have English together, first period, but class doesn’t start for another fifteen minutes, so we station ourselves against the lockers in the hallway. I hand over a pile of comics to Whitney. We pass them out to anyone coming through who shows the slightest bit of interest.
Luke spots us from thirty feet away. He’s grown over the summer, and his brown hair is now streaked with blond. He must have spent some time at the beach. “Yo, ladies!” he says, coming closer. “Whatcha got there?”
“The new issue of Gadget Girl!” Whitney says.
Luke lights up. “Gimme, gimme!” He practically rips one out of Whitney’s hand and flips to the first page. He has yet to notice that I’ve included my byline on the cover.
I foist a copy upon Jason Tran, who looks up in surprise after he sees my name, and pass out a few to the cheerleaders. I’m down to my last copy when the bell rings, signaling first period. Whitney has successfully unloaded all of hers.
“Well, it’s done!” she says, slightly breathless from exhilaration. “We’ve outed you as author.”
“Yeah.” I think of the handful of harsh reviews my mother has suffered. Not everyone gets or appreciates her work, but that’s the way it is with art. There may be some people who don’t like Gadget Girl and who will be more than willing to tell me about it. There may be some people who make a big deal of my disability—“Look! The crip girl can actually do something!” When you put yourself out there in art or in love—or in life in general—you’re risking rejection. I think I can handle it, though. Or at least I’m willing to give it a try.
Whitney and I make our way to English. The classroom is full of familiar faces, and a few new ones. I see that Chad Renquist has already staked out a seat in the back row. There are a couple of empty desks up at the front. “Can you save me a seat?” I ask Whitney.
“Sure,” she says.
I take a deep breath and walk up to Chad. My heart is banging against my rib cage. I concentrate on every step, to make sure I don’t fall. “Here,” I say, holding out the comic book to him. “I heard you were a fan.”
I wait for him and his friends to say something mean about my leg or my mom or my art, but they don’t. Maybe they went through some changes over the summer, too.
“Thanks,” Chad says. He accepts my small gift and looks at the cover. I turn to go to my desk.
“Aiko,” Chad says.
“Yeah?” It’s been years since he’s said my name. I turn around, and he is looking straight at me.
“Your work is really good.”
I smile. “Thanks.” And then I remember all of his assignments in middle school art class. Blue Chad. A painting he did of the lighthouse. “Yours, too.”
35
The day before my mother’s wedding, I open my e-mail to find a reply from Junpei. It’s short, but sweet. He wants to set up a meeting via webcam for the following Saturday morning at eleven, eastern standard time. In one week, I will get to chat with my long-lost half brother face to face! But what if he doesn’t speak English? I’ll have to practice some Japanese phrases. I’ll have to prepare some pictures. I need to choose an outfit. Suddenly, there is so much going on all at once. I can only concentrate on one thing at a time.
So. The wedding.
If it were me, ten or fifteen years in the future, getting married to, say, Hervé, or some grown-up version of Chad, I’d chuck every black thing in my closet and wear a huge, poufy white gown. So what if it had a train that could trip me up? My groom would be there to catch me. Best-case scenario, a wedding is a once-in-a-lifetime event, so I’d want it to be a big deal.
Mom and Raoul’s ceremony, however, is surprisingly low-key, considering it’s the first time for both of them. We’re having it in our backyard, with the lilac bushes and the bird feeder. Only a small group has gathered. Mom’s family is represented by my grandparents, of course. Raoul’s mother is here, as well as his sister and her kids. Whitney, her mom, and Nathan have come over, along with some of Mom’s and Raoul’s friends and colleagues from work. They’ve hired a fe
male judge to officiate. Through Mom’s bedroom window, I can see the guests milling about.
Mom steps into a simple burgundy sheath, the color of the maples at the edge of our yard.
“You would have looked great in a white gown,” I say. “You know, like Princess Diana wore? Or something by Vera Wang.”
Mom stands with her back to me, waiting to be zipped up. “Princess Di was only twenty-one when she got married. I’m too old for that. Besides, I can wear this dress again.”
I close up her dress with one hand, and she turns around, bringing us face to face. She holds me by the shoulders firmly, bracing me. “Are you ready for this?”
I nod. My arm starts to spaz a little. I feel kind of nervous, but I’m sure she does, too. I’ve never had a dad before, and she’s never had a husband. It’ll take some getting used to.
“Okay, one, two, three,” she says, and we both take a deep breath. And exhale. We hold hands as we go out of the bedroom, through the living room, and out the back door. We walk into music—a Mexican wedding song wafting from stereo speakers—and over the soft grass, to where Raoul stands waiting. He’s dressed in a suit, not a tux, and he’s smiling at both of us.
I stand next to them as they exchange vows. When Mom says “I do,” my body goes still. Calm.
Raoul says, “I will,” and I feel as if I’ve been covered in a blanket of safety and love. Before there were just two of us, and now there are three.
The judge, in her navy suit, tells them that they can kiss. As their lips come together, everyone starts to clap. When they break apart and turn toward the gathering, the guests toss birdseed at them. It rains down on Mom’s hair and dress, making her laugh.
“Okay,” Raoul says. “Let the party begin!”
I move toward the card table where the wedding cake is, but I know that Raoul doesn’t mean just now. He’s talking about the rest of our lives.
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